Bible Study Methods

In this section some of the most effective Bible study methods are described and accompanied by resources that will allow you to do these studies in your own way. More complete information is to be found in the following book:

Warren, Richard, with William A. Shell, 12 Dynamic Bible Study Methods, Victor Books, Wheaton, Illinois, 1987.

which is unfortunately now out of print. All the material that follows has been taken exclusively from this book and summarized for this course. I had the privilege of studying this material under William (Bill) Shell in a class on Biblical Interpretation at Reformed Bible College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1988 –1989 and found both him and his teaching very beneficial as his heart was dedicated to the equipping of the saints. If there is any copyright infringement I am solely to blame and plead the excuse that this material is simply too valuable not to be shared with others. In the interest of full disclosure, I did contact Richard Warren's organization to indicate that I wished to to publish this material on this website I was not told that I could not do so. To the best of my knowledge you can freely copy and use this document and its associated documents; I would encourage you to credit 12 Dynamic Bible Study Methods shoul you choose to re-publish this material on any other forum.

In each case a basic outline of the method will be given and some useful tools for this method will be listed. The studies begin with the basic types and progress toward studies that are more in depth and require greater allocations of time but which will also yield greater results. Each Method in this document is accompanied by a chart which has been reproduced from the above book as a series of links to a chart in either HTML format or Adobe PDF format. You must have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your system in order to make use of the PDF charts. The reader may be freely downloaded from the Adobe website.

The Bible study methods discussed in this document are:

1 - The Devotional Method of Bible Study

2 - The Chapter Summary Method of Bible Study

3 - The Character Quality Method of Bible Study

4 - The Thematic Method of Bible Study

5 - The Biographical Method of Bible Study

6 - The Topical Method of Bible Study

7 - The Word Study Method of Bible Study

8 - The Book Background Method of Bible Study

9 - The Book Survey Method of Bible Study

10 - The Chapter Analysis Method of Bible Study

11 - The Book Synthesis Method of Bible Study

12 - The Verse by Verse Method  of Bible Study